Book Image

Blockchain for Business 2019

By : Peter Lipovyanov
Book Image

Blockchain for Business 2019

By: Peter Lipovyanov

Overview of this book

Blockchain for Business 2019 is a comprehensive guide that enables you to bring in various blockchain functionalities to extend your existing business models and make correct fully-informed decisions. You will learn how decentralized applications are transforming numerous business sectors that are expected to play a huge role in the future. You will see how large corporations are already implementing blockchain technology now. You will then learn about the various blockchain services, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Hyperledger, and others to understand their use cases in a variety of business domains. You will develop a solid fundamental understanding of blockchain architecture. Moving ahead, you will get to grips with the inner workings of blockchain, with detailed explanations of mining, decentralized consensus, cryptography, smart contracts, and many other important concepts. You will delve into a realistic view of the current state of blockchain technology, along with its issues, limitations, and potential solutions that can take it to the next level. By the end of this book, you will all be well versed in the latest innovations and developments in the emerging blockchain space.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

An introduction to money

A brief discussion of money will help to solidify your understanding of the mix of finance and technology that we have in the world today.

Basically, we should ask ourselves this question: what is money? Let's think about it for a second; we will find that it's not as easy to define as it might seem.

The textbook definition would claim that money has three main functions, as follows:

  • A medium of exchange
  • A unit of account
  • A store of value

If you are still lost with these definitions, we'll be going into more detail about what they mean in the coming sections.

Money as a medium of exchange

Let's look at a simple example of a barter exchange. Suppose that you traded one of your...